Too Soon Tulips A Worry In Holland, Michigan

HOLLAND (WWJ) – There’s trouble in tulip town as the warm weather has caused the flowers to already begin sprouting in Holland, Michigan.

Tulip Time Festival Executive Director Gwen Auwerda said she’s never seen anything like it.

“Not this early, nope. This was the first time that they’ve been this early,” Auwerda told WWJ Newsradio 950. “I mean, we’ve had early years … during the festival when we didn’t have, you know, all 6 million in bloom at the same time, and we had a smaller number that were actually blooming. But we’ve never seen this at all.”

Will the festival go on, flower-free? Auwerda said there’s not much they can do now but wait and see.

“It depends on the weather. If it’s very hot then, no, the blooms won’t last that long,” she said. “If it’s cool, if they bloom they can last that long. But it’s been so unseasonably warm.”

The festival begins May 5.

Auwerda said, for now, they’re brainstorming other ways to celebrate the tulip.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Sandra McNeill started her career as a newspaper reporter in a small town in England called Wokingham. Her daily walk to the police station to find out what was happening that day invariably came up...